Hi, Here in north Mississippi, our *average* last frost date is April 15, and I've found that to be accurate in the 4 yrs I've lived here. Zone 7 is a great zone to do winter sowing in. Do you know about winter sowing? It is different than direct sowing in the ground. If you don't know the technique you can go to the winter sowing forum and read the FAQs. You can direct sow lettuces, spinach, beets, carrots, radishes, peas. You can set out transplants of lettuces, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower,onion sets. I found a very good tool to use by Gardener's Supply Co. called Gardener's Supply Kitchen Garden Planner, you should be able to find this easily if you google that company. It lets you plan a raised bed square foot garden and along with the plan map it prints out instructions for each veggie, working back from last frost date. So if it says 6 wks before last frost date that would be March 1. I put in my raised beds yesterday. I am also putting out some shrubs and blueberries.
Laurie

I set cool weather annuals in the ground yesterday (which I started from seed in January): lobelia, Chinese forget-me-nots, Baby Blue Eyes and Calendulas. Hopefully these will get busy and bloom and be beautiful until early summer. Since we are having a week of cloudy rainy weather, but with temperatures above freezing at night, I moved all my summer annual and vegetable seedlings outside yesterday: all kinds of flowers, plus peppers, tomatoes, and eggplants. They will harden off in this weather without needing to be brought in and out, and the seedlings will develop stronger stems out in the wind and cool. I will keep an eagle eye on the weather for the next few weeks and cover things if it's frosty, bring them inside if it freezes.

It is definitely not too late to start tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant. Mine were just started two weeks ago. Some folks are just doing it. These plants don't like cold ground. You want to wait until you are having night lows above 55 degrees consistently before you put them out. That's probably four to six weeks away for us here.

My pansy beds are really getting going and are beautiful with hyacinths and daffodils blooming. I will be starting profusion zinnia seed this week to replace the pansies. Once temperatures are above eighty consistently the pansies are done and the soil will be warm enough for zinnias. By waiting this long, I can germinate the zinnias in the house and then grow them on outside. They grow faster and stronger that way.

I too started peas the other day and scallions. Also, put out transplants of lettuce, spinach, cauliflower, and broccoli. I'll also be planting radish and carrot from seed. And my husband bought onion transplants but I've never planted those and have NO idea what to do with them. Anyone know? I assume they can go out now too.

Some of my spinach, brussels, broccoli, lettuce, parsley, swiss chard and cabbage that I planted in the Fall actually made it through under the hoop houses we put up in the Fall! Boy was that worth doing! (First year doing that) The only months I had nothing really to harvest was Jan and Feb. I did lose a few broc and cabbage but not much.